1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to measurement devices and, in particular to frequency measurement devices capable of detecting small changes in frequency.
2. Related Art
As frequency measuring systems, a direct count system in which pulses passing within a predetermined gate time are counted (see, for example, Published Japanese Translation No. HEI 06-501554 of the PCT International Publication), and a reciprocal system in which a pulse period is correctly measured, and the frequency is obtained by the reciprocal of the time. The direct count system may be realized with a relatively small-scale circuit, but needs a longer gate time to obtain a higher frequency resolving power (for example, a gate time necessary to obtain a resolving power of 0.1 Hz is 10 seconds). The reciprocal system can overcome this shortcoming, but requires a greater scale circuit for accurately measuring pulse intervals, compared to that of the direct count system.
When a very small change in mass, such as, the presence or absence of odor substance adhered to a sensor, wants to be detected, a method using changes in the sensor frequency caused by the substance adhered may be considered. For example, a QCM (Quarts Crystal Microbalance) method that uses a quartz oscillator may be used to convert a very small change in mass at a substrate surface of the oscillator to a frequency change. For example, various types of odor sensors can be formed by providing materials to which odor compositions are adhered on surfaces of oscillator substrates. Odor compositions may be composed of a single substance or multiple substances. As sample gas is applied to an odor sensor, its odor compositions adhere to the sensor and change the mass at the surface of the oscillator, whereby the frequency of the oscillator changes. By observing changes at sensors in single kind or multiple kinds, the presence of specified odor compositions can be assumed.
In order to detect changes in the frequency of each of the odor sensors, it is necessary to provide a counter and a signal processing circuit for detecting changes in the frequency at an output of each of the sensors. Furthermore, although the frequency (for example, 30 MHz) of the quartz oscillator changes due to the adhered substance, such a change occurs only in the order of several Hz to several hundred Hz, and the change may be less than 1 Hz. As described above, the direct count system has a low frequency resolving power, and needs to provide a substantially long gate time to increase the frequency resolving power. Errors, such as, plus/minus 1 count errors and errors due to trigger-level jitter may occur at the time of measurement. In addition, when the gate time is made longer, errors that may originate from oscillation stability of the quartz oscillator are superposed on the aforementioned errors. The use of reciprocal system counters may supplement for such shortcomings as described above, but would not be suitable for a sensor array that is equipped with multiple sensors, because the counters each have a large-scale circuit.